Melody and Harmony/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby A baseball cap and two tickets are on a table. Tim places the cap onto his head. Tim sings. TIM: Take me out to the ballgame... Moby covers his ears. MOBY: Beep! Tim sings two more words of the song, then starts talking. TIM: Take me... Ah, I'm practicing for the game tonight. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, when someone sings a melody; what does that mean and what's harmony? Thanks a lot, Shiloh. Hey there. A melody is just a series of musical tones that make up the main tune you hear in a song. Like, if you whistle a tune or hum something, you're almost always whistling or humming the song's melody. An animation shows an American flag blowing in the wind. TIM: Like for "The Star-Spangled Banner," the melody starts off something like this. Tim hums the melody to "The Star-Spangled Banner." MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, what makes one melody different from other melodies is basically the sequence of notes it has. An image shows a musical score with different notes written on it. TIM: Each note in a song has a different pitch, which is how high or low the note is played. Ahem. This is a note with a high pitch. And this note has a low pitch. Tim sings two notes. TIM: A melody's uniqueness also has to do with how long the notes are held and the length of the silences between the notes--that's the rhythm. A different rhythm with the same notes would create a totally different melody. Tim hums "The Star-Spangled Banner" with a different rhythm. MOBY: Beep. TIM: That's right. For a long time, pretty much all music was just melody. Even when people sang in a group, they'd all sing the same notes. But songs that are just melody can be, well, pretty boring. An animation shows a group of monks singing a chant-like melody. TIM: So eventually, people started using something called harmony. Harmony involves multiple pitches sounding at the same time. An animation shows silhouettes of a conductor and an orchestra, playing classical music. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it sounds really nice, doesn't it? When notes play together in harmony they can either be consonant, like they're blending together, Tim plays a harmonious or consonant song on a boom box. TIM: Or dissonant, when the notes slash. Tim plays the same song sung with dissonant harmonies. TIM: Oh, suddenly my singing doesn't sound so bad. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, most harmonies are chords, three or more notes sounded together. The most common type of chord is a triad, three notes sounded together that are a couple of notes away from each other on the musical scale. An image shows a keyboard with the keys C, E, and G highlighted and played individually, then together as a triad. TIM: A triad sounds pretty, but composers have learned that mixing things up a little can make a song sound even more fun. If you've ever sung a round, you can see how this happens. In a round, the same melody is played starting at different times, which creates a harmony. Three images show Tim singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as a round. Tim staggers the singing so the second one starts after the first one has started, and the third one starts after the second one has started. TIM: Rounds were probably the earliest form of harmony, but it got a lot more complicated when composers started putting specific notes together on purpose. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, they figured out that some combinations of notes sounded better than others. When a composer wants to write a piece of music with harmony, he or she will start with a melody… Tim hums "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony." TIM:…and then add all sorts of harmony to make it more interesting. An orchestra plays the symphony. TIM: Huh. Anyway, in popular western music, melody and harmony work together to create a pleasing sound. But not all cultures use harmony as much as we do. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, like a lot of Indian and Middle Eastern music relies more on melody alone. An animation shows the Taj Mahal in India while traditional Indian music plays. TIM: Anyway, are you ready to go to the game? MOBY: Beep. Tim and Moby are in the stands at a baseball game. Tim sings and Moby beeps, "Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd." Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Arts & Music Transcripts